Intricasies of the Deck

There were lots of little things that we did to the foam on the deck in order to get everything to fit correctly.  These include the transom, glass plate, extra foam for vacuuming, rebating the glass overlaps, carbon uni and the bevel on the foredeck.

The foredeck pieces had to be fit in up tight to the blister.  James was in charge of getting this right.  He measured what the bevel was at each station and then transferring that to the foam.  It require a great deal of patience and time because the pieces needed to fit to the cabin top but also to each other and the foredeck has camber that the foam needs to bend around. 

We vacuumed the glass on the deck in order to achieve several different goals:  trying to wick out extra resin,  ensuring a smoother surface, getting an extremely tight fit and finish on the foam which will eliminate air pockets and therefore delamination.  When doing a vacuum there are several things that must be done in addition to the peel-ply and glass.  I will create another post that discusses this completely but what I want to mention here is that we needed to have room for the vacuum tape so the foam extended out past the deckline 50mm so this could be accomplished.

On the bulkhead that was attached there needed to be some work as well.  The mast would come in directly on top of it and the vang would come from the join on the cockpit sole and bulkhead.  There would also be a hatch the would be cut out so that a person could get inside the boat.  In order to support all the weight and compression load that would be put we installed some glass plate that is 15mm thick and at varying sizes at these locations.  Also a some carbon uni strips would be glassed in to give the boat the stiffness to support the load.  These strips would be carried all the way down the bulkhead to the hull and then dispersed out.

Because this part of the deck is what people will see most we had to hide all of the overlaps in the glass by rebating the foam.  We made some special blocks that had sandpaper exactly 50 wide and then rebated all of the spots that would have an overlap.

Another problem that we had was with the transom.  We had to think for discuss the many different options we had about attaching it.  We could either build the deck and the hull and then attach and then fit the transom, or attach the transom to one of the two halves. I will have another post later about the transom and all of its problems.